Carrie Soto Is Back

Javier calls Carrie his “Achilles” from a young age. She learns early about the famous warrior, the “Greatest of the Greeks” (29), and for her, this idea symbolizes her invincibility and the inevitability of her greatness. The first reference to Achilles comes when Javier tells Carrie that “Achilles was a great warrior because it was his destiny to become one” (15). Teaching Carrie this and comparing her story to Achilles’s gives Carrie the impression that she is meant to become larger than life. She strives to achieve greatness, believing so deeply in this “destiny” that it dominates her life. It leads her to fear failure, since she focuses so much on winning that she loses herself along the way. If she cannot become Javier’s Achilles, then she will have failed—not just as a tennis player, but as a person.

However, in Greek legends, Achilles does lose. Achilles is famous for his single point of weakness: his heel. Most myths claim that Achilles died when Paris of Troy shot him in the heel with an arrow. Neither Carrie nor Javier bring attention to this aspect of the Achilles tales. Javier simply calls Carrie his “Achilles,” and Carrie focuses on Achilles’s strength and heroism. Even Nicki, who references Javier’s nickname for Carrie late in the book, does not bring it up. Because Javier focuses on Achilles’s strength, Carrie believes she cannot have any weaknesses. This in turn leads to her overall fear of loss. The need to win defines her life so completely that she does not acknowledge the weakness in the great hero she is supposedly destined to embody.

This image of invincibility—coupled with Carrie’s struggles with self-doubt—recurs throughout the novel. When Carrie and Gwen enter Wimbledon, Gwen recites a piece of “If—” by Rudyard Kipling: “If you can make one heap of all your winnings / And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, / And lose, and start again at your beginnings / And never breathe a word about your loss” (272). Carrie realizes that Gwen believes that she is unafraid of losing, when really loss is Carrie’s deepest fear. Carrie struggles with this contradiction of how she is seen versus who she truly is. On the one hand, it benefits her; she is viewed as cool and collected, which gives her an edge and shapes her public image. On the other, Carrie’s fear and self-doubt bog her down in private. In her mind, heroes like Achilles do not show fear, and they do not lose, so neither can she—despite this belief being based in untruths. By the end of the novel, Carrie overcomes her fear and her image of a heroic destiny. She recognizes that she is still Javier’s Achilles, even if she is no longer seen as the best.

Achilles becomes symbolic of her relationship with her father. When she defeats Stepanova, Carrie feels no sense of triumph because Javier is no longer at her side. She narrates: “I was waiting for it to feel the way I’d always imagined it would. For someone to hug me and tell me I had vanquished the enemy like the Greeks against Troy…” (63). But Javier is the one who saw her as Achilles, and without him, there is no one to truly affirm her victory. This is partly why she asks Javier to coach her for her comeback.